One Chance
by Gabi-hime
Summary: Snape/Adelaide - There is only so much Hufflepuff that Severus Snape can deal with at one time. Particularly in freezing sleet. Severus Snape, Year Three. It's a small chance, but it's maybe the only one he really needs.


Because someone else recently expressed some interest in my other Adelaide and Snape story, Pacing the Cage, I thought I would share this one as well, which is very nearly as old, I think, and obviously very short. But then, if someone else can care for them that makes me happy :D. Anything written for my Harry Potter divergence disregards everything post Order of the Phoenix, so don't look for anything near canon here. My focus has, as ever, been Severus Snape and his completely fail relationship with his Hufflepuff potions partner Adelaide, an orphaned girl raised by the Wizarding state. Adelaide is still one of my personal favorite fan creations, although her story with Snape definitely smacks of _Why'd you read this to me, Grandpa?_

So, for your pleasure, written ages ago, here is _One Chance._

**One Chance**

_By Gabihime gmail dot com_

The bloody freezing sleet slipping down the back of his neck and making his testicles shrivel sulkily back into his body he could handle. His own breath freezing the damnable yellow and black bumble bee scarf to his face he could manage. The rock hard scone -- carefully saved from dinner three weeks past just for him -- that had been lobbed at him over-handed, even that he could put up with, as he could manage the little overwrapped bundle of limbs that had tangled itself around his wand arm the moment he'd shifted his weight forward, on his toes. He had had a clear shot, as clear and beautifully plain as a shot could be in zero degree weather during a sleet storm, but she'd been there, hanging on, as she was always there hanging on.

"_Severus_, oh please don't. They just want to get you in trouble."

There was something very curious about the way her mouth found its way around his name. He imagined it had something to do with the assuredly _muggle _way she had of pronouncing certain words. He had coached her on it for some time, until he had finally given up on it. She would say his name the way she always said it. Mispronouncing it, making it go all soft in the middle when it should be hard and crisp. Severus. It was a Latin name.

The sleet he could stand, the dull stinging pain of the knot on his forehead he could manage -- he'd repay them for that anyway -- repay them in spades. The nuisance clinging to his arm he had long learned how to tolerate and even expect. What he could not stand was sitting like a complete dolt in the damnable badger's section of the stands, listening to them all cheer like a bunch of lobotimized morons who had just been shown the miracle of cake for the first time, couldn't stand how the most irate and vocal of these morons sometimes grabbed after Adelaide's arm when the sleety bumblebees had possession of the quaffle -- as if he had that right -- as if it were his to grab. He just hunkered down further in the silver-green trimmed robes that stood out like poison in the midst of this sunny canary jamboree of the learning impaired and tried to pretend that he wasn't here of his own choosing, that she'd twisted his arm to come. She had. She always was. He _hated _it.

He screwed up his eyes so he could see across the haze of the flying rain and snow to the familiar pewter and hunter pennanted row where they were not welcome. Well, she was not welcome, and he'd screwed up his ears just as hard as he'd screwed up his eyes the first time he'd heard them let the words "impure blood" fall on her. She hadn't minded. She never minded anything, always sweet and sunny like she had a core of unspoilable jam or something. She was never unhappy, always mindlessly cheerful, like a little goldfinch. Stupid girl. Stupid little goldfinch. She wasn't meant to sit with a raven _gawkylittlecrow_ shut up.

Yet somehow it was deeply satisfying that it was his arm that she grabbed after, and not the like arm of the other little bullfinch who shot him a dark look that he did not deign to return.

"Oh _Severus_, we scored again! Do you think we might have a chance?"

And he looked at her with the snow-melted droplets of water twinkling like beaded diamonds in the pale blond hair that curled around her her small little face, with her eyes too big and her nose button and a little upturned, as if she had run into a wall, and he counted the freckles that spattered light and pale brown in front of her Irish green eyes and she really was a little goldfinch, a little bumblebee all yellow and black and sidled against him for warmth, because his tall stringy bulk at least did a little to break the wind, and he knew her. He knew _them_. Stupid little goldfinch.

"No," he said flatly, and then he stood with little ceremony, shrugging her off, bundling his long skinny hands into his sleeves muttering something about having reached his tolerance of idiots for the day and having actual work to attend to. She immediately jumped to her feet to follow him on the treacherous climb down the stands in the wind, but then he shot her a look more icy cold than the weather could ever hope to manage, bitter and shriveled like the inside of an apple seed -- cyanide sharp. Stupid goldfinch didn't even know when she was supposed to stay with her own kind.

He could manage the sleet down his collar and the taunting from _them _and even an earful of deeply disturbing songs about badgers, but he found he could not manage the little bit of raw hurt he saw open on her face before she brushed her mittened hands across it.

He turned back to the ladder and then shrugged his shoulders again, pulling his hood up to keep the cold off of his ears, his hair nearly frozen slick against them already. If she was going to be stupid then there was very little he could do about it. He might as well make her happy. It cost him nothing -- or very nearly nothing. It gave him --

No.

Nothing.

It gave him nothing.

"Adelaide," he hissed, as if she had been the one amiss, the one out of line, as if she had been the one begging leave, as if he had not been the one to cast her off, "_Attend_."

And she did.


End file.
